Brief Report: Maternal socialization of emotion and the development of emotion regulation in early adolescent girls

Regulation of negative emotions is a core competency of child development. Parental emotion socialization profoundly influences later capacity to regulate negative affect in childhood and adolescence. The present study examined the effects of maternal emotion socialization on the development of emotion regulation in the context of a longitudinal study of 210 mother-daughter dyads. Dyads completed a conflict resolution task when the child was age 11 years during which maternal warmth and hostility were coded. At ages 11 to 13 years, mothers completed self-report measures of supportive and non-supportive responses to child negative emotion, and children completed self-reports of inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger. We used latent growth curve modeling to estimate changes in inhibition and adaptive regulation of sadness and anger over time; observed maternal warmth and hostility were included as time-invariant covariates and maternal self-report of supportive and non-supportive responses were included as time-varying covariates. Observed maternal warmth was positively associated with girls’ adaptive regulation of anger and sadness at age 11 years. Maternal self-reported supportive responses to girls’ negative affect were positively associated with girls’ adaptive regulation of anger, and non-supportive responses were negatively associated adaptive regulation of anger and sadness. These findings support the role of maternal emotion socialization and indicate specific effects of maternal warmth and supportive responses in the development of girls’ capacity to modulate negative emotions during early adolescence.